NAACP, Homestead council in dispute over Confederate flag (Plantation: house, neighborhood)

[EnjoyTheSilence]

Originally Posted by lolitazz

That flag has a connotation of hate, it doesn't matter the history, what matters is the connotation.

Yes and it would be extremely offensive to wear a Che Guevara shirt in Miami. Again it doesn't matter what Che Guevara's or Lenin's intentions were, they represent ideas of repression and mass murder. You can choose to do whatever you want, but that still makes you a nasty person if you don't care for other people's feelings.

Just don't let your hate for liberals cloud your mind. This is not a liberal/conservative issue.

I believe that anyone who feels like wearing a Che Guevara shirt in Miami should be free to do so (and they are), just as anyone who feels like flying the Confederate flag should also be free to do so. While the flag is misused by racists, it does not mean that the flag should be banned, or that everyone who wants to fly it is a racist. Banning anything like this is not the right way to go, in my opinion (and I consider myself to be fairly liberal). Just because a bunch of racists hijacked the rebel flag, doesn't mean that ordinary folk should be barred from displaying it in public.

[Thomas Jefferson]

So, then if a member of one of the US minority groups says something against a while male is Ok but if a white male has a confederate flag in his backyard is wrong, I DONT GET IT.

[♥♥PRINC3Ss♥♥]

Originally Posted by BCreass

I believe that anyone who feels like wearing a Che Guevara shirt in Miami should be free to do so (and they are), just as anyone who feels like flying the Confederate flag should also be free to do so. While the flag is misused by racists, it does not mean that the flag should be banned, or that everyone who wants to fly it is a racist. Banning anything like this is not the right way to go, in my opinion (and I consider myself to be fairly liberal). Just because a bunch of racists hijacked the rebel flag, doesn't mean that ordinary folk should be barred from displaying it in public.

People can do whatever they want, and some will if the law allows them & as long as they can't be outnumbered (no one will wave that flag in Liberty city or wear a Che Guevara's shirt in Little Havana) People are only "so" brave.

I am not saying doing these things is illegal or that they should be banned from doing it. For me however, anyone that chooses to do something that might offend a group of people is a selfish arrogant confrontational person looking for trouble. If the flag was hijacked too bad for the flag, most black people are not gonna sit down to hear the history of that flag. They will probably feel threaten. I will feel threaten as a Latina if I see that. It is what it is.

[Leovigildo]

They'll start banning the Confederate Battle Flag and in the end, in a foreseeable future, the "American" flag will be banned because some crackpot organization of vegetarian lunatics of non-European ancestry will claim that the "flag was kidnapped by fascists (anyone but them) and represents the greatest atrocieties in America History".

Crackpots and liberals hate patriotic flags, they want a rainbow flag with little birds singing.

[confidentialone]

[b]homestead is becoming a racist city and th eblack officials that work for the city of homestead are scared of losing their jobs so they keep quiet. that flag needs to be banned. i support the naacp for standing up. this is a racist town. the cops are racist. as we now, 1 homestead cop was already arrested for harming a black male teen. anyways, i am against the flag.

[tallrick]

Amazing this is still an issue here. No reason to have confederate flags displayed inside any government building but it must be allowable to display it on all private property. Same goes for Nazi or any other flag. You see tons of Cuban and Puerto Rican flags as well as other nationalities. My concern is that they will ban other historic flags like the Gadsen flags or other symbols of freedom. Also a few of my friends have a confederate battle flag or two on their vehicles or homes.

[cuba libre]

Originally Posted by tallrick

Amazing this is still an issue here. No reason to have confederate flags displayed inside any government building but it must be allowable to display it on all private property. Same goes for Nazi or any other flag. You see tons of Cuban and Puerto Rican flags as well as other nationalities. My concern is that they will ban other historic flags like the Gadsen flags or other symbols of freedom. Also a few of my friends have a confederate battle flag or two on their vehicles or homes.

Isn't the confederate flag just another example of multiculturalism? Why can't Southerners be allowed to participate in the multiculturalism charade?

[rogerbacon]

Originally Posted by cuba libre

Isn't the confederate flag just another example of multiculturalism? Why can't Southerners be allowed to participate in the multiculturalism charade?

LOL. Multiculturalism: all cultures are equal -- except the ones we don't like.

[1984vt]

Originally Posted by Bostonian08

Well the Confederacy and National Socialism had one major common theme - extreme racism. It was white superiority in the old south which touted that AA were simply an inferior race thus they could be held as property. In Germany, it was the aryan race that was supposedly superior, which was why Jews and Slavs could be (and were) liquidated wholesale to create lebensraum for the superior race. Anybody who was on the receiving end of either treatment would agree neither was a good thing. And to suggest Nazism was worse than slavery, I have heard the considerable argument that while Nazi was brutal it, only lasted 6 years while slavery lasted 300 in this country alone.

I don't know enough about Che to really comment, but it does seem to me he and Fidel fought a war which was purportedly started to liberate the poor Cubans from the vices of the mob controlled gambling houses of the day. I don't know enough about the Batista regime to imagine how awful they were. And certainly one must say if Fidel was such a populist, one must wonder why he didn't accept term limits. But one must admit that in the chronicle of the world's atrocities, Fidel does not rank at all in the list of the world's most notorious villains.

Nonetheless, I oppose war in almost all scenarios. In his latest years, one of the oldest living WW1 vets made the statement that war is nothing more than the condoned and organized murder of countless human beings. By firing the first shot at Fort Sumter the rebels began a process that cost the lives of more Americans than any other war, and that was when our population was a mere 31M. Factor that ratio and today's comparable mayhem would be on the order of 7 million dead Americans. Frankly I rather disagree with Lincoln's choice to go to war. In retrospect, it may have been better to let the south go and let them find their own miserable way to the end of the peculiar institution like Brazil did.

Honestly I don't find the rebel flag all that offensive at all. I used to wear it in my Lynryd Skynyrd days much to the chagrin of my gay art teacher. Of course I naively saw it simply as a rebellious youth symbol at the time. It is pretty benign at this point, but I certainly understand how it offends the heirs of its victims.

Symbols of extreme racism that lead to historic bloodbaths are hard for me to respect. When it comes to free speech - sure they can wave it, but at the same time those are offended by it have the right to speak out and use their political clout to thwart it, right? And I have the right to boo when they come by, just like you may boo Che or Lenin or any other warmaking monsters, right?

To me George Washington was not as great a man a Gandhi, MLK, Buddha or Christ. The reason I believe the latter are better is these few individuals found the way to change the world without the mass murder of war. Washington and other warriors are common in history. Bloodless leaders are rare. I don't think Christ would approve of what deeds the symbolism of the cross lead to in his posthumous history.

Slavery was in the United States prior to the south being settled - claiming that white people from the south were responbile for slavery is uninformed at the least.

[stevep111]

Suggested reading "Black Red Necks and White Liberals" by Thomas Sowell. This is the true history of racism, slavery and liberalism.